Abstract
In Rio de Janeiro, favelas (Brazilian slums), with more than a century of existence, are highly incorporated to the urban landscape . It is important to mention that it was in Rio de Janeiro, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, that the term “favela” first emerged to designate (and discriminate) poor settlements built in the fringes of the formal city by the individual initiative of dwellers themselves. Initially considered precarious and temporary settlements, favelas turned into immense poor neighborhoods, as from the second half of the twentieth century, endowed with great cultural vitality and showing a clear critical consciousness related to the segregation and excluding processes associated with their origin. This article presents some thoughts on the resistance and consolidation of favelas and their leading role in the processes of the production and reproduction of spaces of the poor.
English version by Denise de Alcantara Pereira.
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Notes
- 1.
It is worth mentioning that it was precisely in Rio de Janeiro that the term “favela” first emerged, by the end of the nineteenth century, to designate (and discriminate) poor and informal settlements built in the margins of the formal city by initiative of the own dwellers.
- 2.
Carioca refers to anything from or anyone who is born in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
- 3.
The housing complexes of Cidade de Deus and Vila Kennedy were built by the government in the 1960s to house people removed from the more privileged areas of the city.
- 4.
Other examples of housing complexes that turned into slums can be found in Andrade, Luciana and Leitão, Gerônimo. Transformações na paisagem urbana: favelização de conjuntos habitacionais, in: A cidade pelo avesso; desafios do urbanismo. Rachel Coutinho Marques da Silva (org.). Rio de Janeiro: Viana & Mosley: Ed. PROURB, 2006, p. 114
- 5.
The analysis refers only to the street pattern accessibility. Therefore, cases where topography represents land sliding or collapsing risks for existing dwellings are exempt here.
- 6.
The population of Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region is estimated in approximately 12 million people (IBGE, Census 2010).
- 7.
I owe this idea to Professor Jorge Luiz Barbosa, to whom I am grateful for the always fruitful dialogue on the theme of favelas.
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Duarte, C.F. (2018). The “Reinvention” of the City Through the Favelas. In: Capanema Alvares, L., Barbosa, J. (eds) Urban Public Spaces. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74253-3_8
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